NASA is celebrating Halloween in a way that only it can: by releasing a photo of a space “jack-o’-lantern” that looks big and mean enough to eat a planet.
The space agency got into the festive spirit by sharing the photo on Sunday. The image shows the sun as an orange-black ball with bright spots seemingly outlining a “mouth” and two “eyes” on its surface. The phenomenon was created by swirling gas and radiation.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite captured the image in 2014 using the ultraviolet spectrum.
“The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are the areas that emit more light and energy,” NASA wrote in the post on its website. “They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.”
The image is a blend of two extreme ultraviolet wavelengths that are typically colourized in gold and yellow, NASA said.
Thankfully, the sun isn’t due to devour our planet for another couple-o’-billion years, so the photo is all in good fun.